Little girls in tutus, toddlers in pajamas and cowboy boots, blanket forts and colorful toys--that's what life is really like."

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- In a rare moment of tranquility, Vestavia Hills resident Lindsey Culver sat flipping through a magazine earlier this month when a dose of reality hit her.

She turned the page to see one of her favorite actresses, Tina Fey, in an ad depicting her in a frazzled state with her children in the kitchen. Seemingly every object in their home--toys, the family pet, unfinished homework, crayons, nail polish remover--appears to swallow them whole.

"That," Culver said she thought to herself, "is what it's really like to be a mom."

Often times, Culver, a professional family photographer based in Downtown Birmingham, captures moms and their babies when they are looking their best, when the mom has made time to head to the salon, do her makeup and pick out an outfit; when the children have been scrubbed, squeezed into neatly-ironed outfits and bribed to believe that if they smile big enough, a surprise awaits.

But that's just the thing: As beautiful as those pictures are, Lindsey knows all too well just how staged they really are.

She's a mother of two, after all. Her youngest, a baby boy named Roland, is just four-months-old. Smith, her baby girl, is two.

"I'm in the middle of that chaos," said Culver with a laugh, "that comes when you bring a new baby home."

Just in time for Mother's Day and newly inspired by both the magazine ad and her own everyday experiences as a mom, Culver set out to capture the real, everyday moments of moms from around the greater Birmingham area, the way things look and are when there are no cameras around.

"I connected and empathized with (Tina Fey's) expression and wrecked home," said Culver about the magazine ad. "I started thinking about how this could easily be the home of my clients and friends with young children and decided I wanted to capture that moment."

She asked her "subjects"--moms who are friends of hers as well as past clients--to brainstorm what a typical day might be like in their home. Where, she asked them, did they spend the most time with their children?

It was in those spaces, said Culver, that she wanted to photograph them. Over a period of 10 days, she set out to capture the messiness and joy that comes from being a mom.

"I told them not to clean their house or dress their kids in anything out of the ordinary," she said.

A couple of the moms asked if they should wear no makeup and yoga pants, said Culver, how they might typically look on a day at home.

"My vision was to have the moms put together surrounded by their everyday life," said Culver. "I told them to do whatever was comfortable, to dress and primp to however they felt best. These are pictures about them, after all."

To capture their best expressions, she said, she asked the moms to imagine themselves looking at that photo when they were 16-years-old.

"That made for some great shots," said Culver.

Little girls in tutus, babies in diapers with bows in their hair, toddlers in pajamas and cowboy boots, blanket forts and colorful toys; moms with feather boas around their neck, snuggled in bed and drowning in toys--that's what life is really like.

"These pictures show real moms," said Culver, "that all moms can identify with."